Design Work on the Spire from 1973 - 1978
Dr Peter Kneen
My initial involvement with Sir Roy Grounds and the design of the Spire followed on from a meeting with senior engineers from John Connell and Associates (JCA) at a Conference about Tall Buildings at the University of Sydney in 1973. As a result I was engaged to carry out a complete design check on the four large spaceframe roof structures proposed for the Collins Place Project and another four roofs for the Canberra Hospital Services Complex.
The Arts Centre Spire and Meeting Sir Roy Grounds
At the end of being briefed on these two projects, we were in Andrew Goad’s office (JCA) and on the wall behind there was a drawing of a tall tapering lattice tower.
It turned out that this was the state of play for the design of the Spire for the Victorian Arts Centre. I had last heard of the spire whilst in High School when pupils were encouraged to save their copper coins for the copper clad spire. John Peyton asked, “do you want to have a go at that one?” I answered with a yes and so John contacted the architect Sir Roy Grounds, and he agreed to meet me the next day where he defined the basic criteria to be satisfied. By this time the concept for a copper clad spire "place marker" covering a relatively small theatre built below street level had been abandoned and a tall open tapering lattice spire was the direction to be followed.
Carols in the Domain has become a free pre-Christmas annual Concert which features many popular national and international performers and guests. The concept was started in 1983 by Robyn Anne Hobbs OAM. See more details in Wikipedia
A Principal Sponsor has held naming rights for the event - currently (2024) being known as Woolworths Carols in the Domain.
The event is held in the Domain Gardens adjacent to the Sydney CBD, and each year the quite large stage and for many years the lightweight tensile structure covering canopy is erected.
The founding President of the then MSAA (now the LSAA) was largely responsible for developing the original PVC fabric canopy design concept.
Vinzenz Sedlak started with a lycra model at a scale of 1:100 and envisaged four masts located near each corner of the stage. Diagonal cross cables spanned between the opposite mast heads and a long front edge cable gave an uninterrupted view of the stage area.
The direct measurements from the model of the xyz coordinates of salient points (anchorages, mast tops and bases) was then fed into a form-finding program developed by Peter Kneen - also a founding member of LSAA. The following plots show the computer model.
The next step was to produce cutting patterns which were joined to form a 1:25 scale model.
The resultant PVC fabric structure (the fabric component has been replaced during the 40 year life) was fabricated by Bert Bilsborough. Bert was still keen on using both sewn and welded seams in the early 1980s but most PVC coated membranes from that time just used high frequency welding. George Clark developed much of the structural details of the supporting structure - masts, cables and anchorages.
Some images of the first structure erected in the domain follow:
With the advent of large screens and AV technology, the structures erected in recent times are removed from true tensile fabric architecture.
Vision Australia's Carols by Candelight presented by AAMI is held on Christmas Eve at the iconic Sidney Myer Music Bowl venue in the Kings Domain in Melbourne!
Carols by Candlelight was the concept of Norman Banks MBE with the first event being held in 1938.
The current venue for Carols by Candlelight - since its completion in 1959 - is a pioneering, world class example of tensile architecture using stressed cables in a double curvature form to resist environmental loads (wind) and to act as an effective sound shell for music.
This is a unique tensile cablenet structure was designed by Barry Patten of the Architectural firm Yuncken Freeman Brothers, Griffiths and Simpson. Engineering was done by Irwin Johnstone.
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